Our spy photographers got us a peek at the upcoming Audi A3’s interior back in November, but now the cabin has officially debuted at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. Without a car wrapped around it. (Or a back seat.)

As we saw both in the spy photos and on the A3 concept from last year’s Geneva auto show, the layout is clean and keeps the number of buttons to a minimum. At the center is a 7-inch-diagonal, 0.4-inch-thick pop-up screen using Audi’s latest version of MMI tailored specifically to small cars. Because of space constraints, using a separate touchpad and control wheel (as found on the A6, A7, and A8) was not possible, so Audi engineers combined the two. As in other touchpad-equipped Audis, the one in the A3 can be used to input letters and numbers into the infotainment system and pan around the navigation map. It works for some additional functions here, such as swiping back and forth through the album browser function with a connected iPod. In front of the “touchwheel,” as Audi engineers call it, are the buttons for primary navigation through the MMI system. One other notable feature is that the seek/next track button is now integrated into the volume knob—it rocks right and left for the added functionality.

The A3 also debuts the use of what Audi calls the MMX (Multi-Media eXtension) board. Powered by Nvidia’s Tegra system-on-a-chip family (the A3 uses a Tegra 2), a single plug-in board slightly larger than a playing card runs all of the infotainment and instrument-cluster displays. The key to the MMX is that it’s modular and separate from the rest of the car’s development cycle, so upgrades can be implemented in a short period of time. For instance, a new Tegra 3 MMX board that Audi showed at CES could be swapped directly with no other modifications, although Audi has not announced where we’ll see the Tegra 3 first.

The new architecture and faster processor (compared to older MMI systems) allow for a few interesting tweaks to the user interface. Scroll through the main menu and a preview of the corresponding function’s screen displays in the middle. When you adjust car settings, a fully rendered 3D model of the car pops up on screen and shows the user exactly what is being adjusted. Turn the brightness of the ambient lighting in the doors down, for instance, and the model will show a close-up of the interior with the lights getting dimmer.

One last innovation announced as an option on the A3 is what Audi calls the “Phone Box” in the center console. At the base of the bin is a near-field contact point that passes the signal from the phone’s antenna through to the car’s more powerful exterior antenna. The result is that the driver leaves the phone in the box for less distraction and benefits from better reception.

We expect to see the A3 interior again—inside the production car this time—at the Geneva show in March.